


Risen

by Yeah_Toast



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Immortality, Left Hand Peter Hale, M/M, Mentions of Character Death, Resurrection, Temporary Character Death, The Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Wakes & Funerals, like a sort of offbrand, repeated resurrection, return from the dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25565446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_Toast/pseuds/Yeah_Toast
Summary: Definition of resurrection:1. The state of one risen from the dead
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 4
Kudos: 112
Collections: Teen Wolf Bingo





	Risen

**Author's Note:**

> For my Teen Wolf Bingo Square: Resurrection

The first time he dies he thinks he’s mistaken. He thinks his injuries are less severe than he’d initially assumed, he thanks the moon, and he moves on. Only later, when he returns home, does he notice the flaws in that assumption.

Talia asks what had taken him so long, why he’d been gone nearly twice as long as he’d promised. He doesn’t admit that he thought he’d been gone exactly as long as he’d thought he would be.

It’s not just the missing time though, it's the faint memories. The unnatural certainty he has when he thinks about what it feels like to simply stop breathing. He can remember the confusion, the sensation of his heart beating until it suddenly wasn’t.

He remembers the wolfsbane. The poison coursing through his veins. He knows he should be dead.

It makes no sense though; Peter can’t have simply been unconscious. If what his sister says is true and he was out of commission for days then his body must have been beyond repair, particularly without help. He should be dead, especially given that he had woken up alone in the woods in a dried, undisturbed puddle of his own blood. There had been no help. He had survived anyway. 

The second time that Peter dies is when it really clicks for him. He gets shot. It isn’t wolfsbane infused, but he knows as well as any other born wolf that isn’t the only way to kill a were. No wolf can heal if the shot kills them immediately, and there is no way the .45 that burrows through his skull doesn’t kill him.

He wakes up in a shallow grave, one that he easily crawls his way out of. The most recent scent is that man who killed him, from a whole three days before. 

He was dead for three days. There is no other explanation.

After that, things change. He takes more risks, though he's very aware that resurrection doesn’t prevent the pain of death. Peter would gladly choose winning a fight the first time rather than having to die, come back, and deal with it later, but he can’t deny the uses of the odd ability. Still he keeps it as secret as he can; the one time he comes back still near the people who killed him, he makes sure to take them all down before they can report what they’ve seen.

He doesn’t tell his pack. He doesn’t want to worry them.

He never considers the ways that resurrection might fail him. The consequences it may have.

The first time he comes back and wishes that he hadn’t is during the Hale fire. He’s the last wolf to die, a fact that he knows simply by virtue of refusing to stop fighting until he was sure there was no one left to fight for. He dies. He dies and he comes back, but the fire continues, raging on and on until there is nothing left but a burnt out husk, both man and house alike.  
The thing is, even as crazy as he is, the instinct to hide what he is, what he can do, is deeply ingrained. He knows he won’t survive his revenge, even if he can’t know what will kill him. All he knows is that Kate Argent will suffer and die by his hand, that she’ll regret what she did to his family, to him. She’ll wish that death would stick to him, and she’ll do her best to ensure that it will.

He has the attention of several teens, not just his wayward beta, but another, his best friend. He has the attention of several potential threats, and so, crazy though he may be, he lays the groundwork to cover his tracks. He bites the banshee. Later, he uses his claws to implant memories of the “Wyrmwood ritual” of how he plans to resurrect himself.

He dies by fire and claws. His family and his worst nightmare, united against him. It hurts, but at least Kate Argent is no more.

Years later, Stiles will ask him about it as they sit researching while the betas deal with another threat. Peter will think nothing of it, he’d befriended the boy by the time he’s gone off to college, and questions about magic are par for the course by now.

So when Stiles asks which ritual he’d used for his resurrection, Peter replies without thinking. He’ll never admit it, but he’s long since dropped his guard around Stiles (that is of course if no one else is there).

“The Wyrmwood Ritual,” Peter mutters, flipping through a bestiary that he’d liberated from a hunter who had killed him nearly a decade ago.

“Really?” Stiles asks, and Peter catches his nose wrinkling when he glances up.

“Yes?” Peter asks, because he’s committed now. “Why?”

“Nothing, I'm just surprised. It seems like the least efficient way to do things.”

Peter knows this. He researched resurrection extensively in the years after he recognized his ability. He never found any answers of course, everything he’d read seemed to imply that resurrection was a one time occurrence, that there was no chance for multiple ones. He’d chosen the Wyrmwood Ritual not for its efficiency, but rather because it was the easiest one to fake and he’d been rather out of his mind. Still, he’d been able to take advantage of the fact that there was a banshee right there, one that he’d already bit, and he could make it seem as though his resurrection was one off, a fluke event. 

“Well,” He drawls. “I was insane.”

“Yeah,” Stiles laughs, and it throws Peter still, all these years later, that Stiles can laugh about it now. He remembers the parking garage, asking that fearful teenage boy to join his pack. He never thought he’d say it, but he’s glad Stiles refused. He likes the man he’s become, strong and willing to do what he believes in. He doesn’t know how being a beta would’ve changed things.

Peter is still reminiscing when Stiles continues, “Still though, even when you were insane you were calculating. There has to be a reason that you chose that ritual and not, oh, I don't know, the Leistung one.”

Peter raises a brow. “I would’ve needed a mate for the Leistung ritual. I don’t know how well you remember those days, but I didn’t exactly have partners lining up to be with me, let alone in such a committed manner.”

“Do you have any now?”

“Pardon?” Peter asks, as he scents the air. Stiles has always been adept at hiding his emotions, even in scent, a result of the manifestation of his ADHD. He simply feels too much at once, his scent muddling together. Now though, now Peter thinks he can pick up on just a hint of something.

Attraction. 

Jealousy. 

Stiles isn’t trying to dig into his secret. To learn what he’s hiding. The boy is trying to scope out his competition. To learn more about Peter’s love life.

Peter leers at him. “Oh there’s one or two. I know who I’d prefer though.”

“And who’s that,” Stiles asks, breath catching in his throat.

The door swings open, and Scott enters shouting something or other that Peter doesn’t care to listen to. Instead, he simply notes the way Stiles’ face falls and resolves to resume this conversation at a more opportune moment.

Unfortunately, that moment is delayed by Peter’s own untimely death, this time in front of the entire pack. They’re kind enough to hold a small funeral for him this time, completel with a casket and a plot in the graveyard. He should be grateful they don’t cremate him, he supposes; he suspects that Stiles had mentioned his aversion to flame and ash as a point in favor of a proper burial. He’s glad, not willing to test and see if his resurrection truly goes so far. 

Still though, as he claws at the roof of his coffin, trying to create an escape, he wishes that they’d just left his corpse on the forest floor where it had fallen. It would make this next part much easier. 

His ascent takes twenty seven days and thirteen deaths. He’s suffocated to death several times before, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys it. In fact, after this, it may be among his least favorite ways to die.

His most recent resurrection brings with it questions that Peter has been dreading from his first death. This time is not like the others, he wasn’t left to rot wherever his body fell. People cared enough to bury him, they know that he’s dead, and there isn’t a simple way for him to reassert himself in their lives without acknowledging what happened. The only other time he’s died quite so publicly, Derek had been the one to kill him, and he’d already covered his tracks. This time though, this time he’s wholly unprepared.

The smart thing to do would be to run. He’s known since he was first brought back that it would be foolish to trust anyone with this secret. He knows that still holds true. Still, when he thinks of leaving he also thinks of Stiles. Of years of researching together, and laughter, and the peculiar scent of when he asked Peter about mates.

Peter thinks about Stiles, and he makes up his mind. Peter thinks about Stiles, and he makes his way to the loft.

Later, he’ll admit that this isn’t his brightest idea. That showing up covered in grave dirt, and the blood from where his scratching tore his own nails off of his hands may not be the most attractive sight.

But that’s for later. 

Now though, now though he waltzes into the loft as if he owns it. He can’t smell who is inside, nose blind as a result of the scent of death entrenching him, so he resolves to simply act as though he does not care.

Given that when he enters he’s met with a shot through the head, this is a mistake.

Stiles has always been a crack shot. The fact that the shot was his is proven when Peter comes back and he’s staring up at the face of the younger man as he approaches Peter, now in a wooded clearing, with an axe, no doubt for dismemberment.

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Peter informs him.

Stiles hefts the ax. 

“Who are you? Why do you look like Peter?”

Peter sighs. “It’s me, Stiles. I may or not possess the ability to come back from the dead.”

“Prove it. How do I know you’re Peter?”

“Nothing I say that you already know will convince you,” Peter tells him. “You know as well as I do that there are several beings that if they have the power to take my form could also take my memories. My best chance here is probably to explain myself and hope it sounds good enough to you.”

Peter tells Stiles something he’s never told anyone. He tells him of dying, not once, not twice, but time after time. He speaks of the part that’s even worse, the coming back, the detachment from real life. Perhaps most importantly, he tells Stiles how he’s never felt detached from life when looking at him.

When it comes, the kiss isn’t a surprise for either of them.


End file.
